A few days ago I posted some lighthearted and completely unhelpful thoughts about our upcoming year, but today I thought I would get a little more serious about what’s happening (the good and the bad) and what might be coming down the pike for good ol’ Planet Earth over the next few years and beyond.
Renewable Energy Will Double by 2027. Rapid Acceleration.
According to a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global deployment of renewable energy will double in the next five years, finally surpassing coal-generated electricity and producing the equivalent of China’s entire power capacity today. The report upped the previous forecast (from not even a year ago) by 30%, and most of the rapid acceleration is being driven by the energy crunch brought on by Russia’s antics.
So the renewables growth in Europe is being driven by both energy reliability concerns as well as climate ambition. But China, India, and the US are also contributing a significant portion of the accelerated deployment with new commitments, investments, and policies.
Solar energy alone is set to triple in the next five years and will become the largest source of power globally, according to the IEA.
In theory this brings us closer to being able to meet the global goal of staying below 1.5C warming, as well as the 2050 net zero carbon goals, but there will still need to be some serious revisions to permitting to enable the even faster deployment that would be required in the next 25 or so years. The ramp up over the next five years keeps 1.5C on the table of achievability though, which is really pretty huge.
For the first time, it really does appear that political will is now more aligned with economic, manufacturing, and deployment capacity, and I expect renewables to experience exponential growth in the next few years.
A Fusion Timetable Will Become Clearer
It is essential that renewables become the main source of energy in the next few years and decades, but beyond that, there is now a real promise of nuclear fusion energy. This would be truly carbon-free, clean energy, but experts say it’s likely still a few decades away from widespread commercialization.
However, there are already over 30 companies who are working on the technology needed to bring fusion to the grid and the Fusion Industry Association predicts that some fusion power will be connected to the grid in the 2030s. One company plans to have a prototype to produce fusion power at the push of a button by 2025.
So I think it’s plausible that enough money (and there is a LOT of money already being pumped into fusion), and attention might accelerate the timetable of widespread use. This really would solve a lot of our global energy challenges, though even if fusion becomes more accessible, electrification will have to ramp up and grids will have to be more robust.
My sense though is that we will get more clarity in the next few years on a realistic timetable.
Biodiversity Loss Will Continue, But ‘Nature Positive’ Policies Will Emerge
According to a report by the World Wildlife Fund and reported in the World Economic Forum, in 2022, species abundance has declined by almost 70% over the last 50 years or so.
Latin America and parts of Asia are seeing the greatest declines and freshwater species are overall the most threatened, but a loss of biodiversity is occurring virtually everywhere.
The greatest threat to biodiversity is how we use land. Habitat loss is by far the greatest impact on the decline of biodiversity at the moment, though climate change would become the most important if we’re unable to curb carbon emissions.
It is frankly, a daunting task to reverse this trend.
However, nations are beginning to take this seriously, and I am anticipating a renewed and very intentional international focus to emerge in the next year or two. I think it’s even possible that there will be a louder clamor for new policies on biodiversity than for climate change. The two are intertwined of course, but as we make progress on climate, I do think it’s likely we will pay more public and global attention to kick-starting more aggressive policies on species and habitat. I’m even more hopeful with the recent election of President Lula in Brazil and declarations in support of the rights of nature in both Ecuador and Bolivia.
It’s my contention that there will be meaningful agreements on conservation as well as regenerative agriculture and a move away from monoculture crops and products (such as palm oil). We (the consumers) will have to help with this shift, and there are signs that we are willing (in general) to move towards a more plant-forward diet, and buy more sustainable products, though change is slow.
It’s difficult to see how progress will be speedy, but I do think that the ship can be turned. I anticipate more visible effort in the next few years.
Businesses Will be Held Accountable by Consumers and Shareholders
Europe, the US, Canada, and a number of other countries are in the process of moving from optional to mandatory climate risk disclosures in the next year or three.
Although this gives us all (especially investors) a more standardized and transparent view into what large companies are doing with respect to emissions reduction and risk management, the main shift will be that climate considerations will be mainstreamed into how to run a business.
All sorts of businesses who are part of the supply chain for the larger companies will also have to start tracking climate-related risk and emissions, even though they won’t be required to directly by governments. It will just start to become ‘common practice’ to report on climate activities and risk management.
This will be beneficial for all of us, and it allows us to start to decide on whether and how to do business with companies who lag on their commitments. Ultimately, I do think it will start to impact companies’ bottom line if they’re not meeting consumer and investor expectations.
We will Drastically Reduce Single-Use Plastics
Already, there are signs that single-use plastics are declining. Bans appears to be working. At least 20 countries, including eight states in the US have some level of single-use plastic bans or serious disincentives.
I expect this trend to accelerate rapidly as people figure out how to easily substitute other materials for single-use plastics. This will genuinely have a huge impact on plastic pollution. Almost half of US plastic waste is from single-use plastics, for example. And Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister for Canada, recently tweeted that Canada’s ban will reduce plastic waste by 1.3 million tonnes over the next decade.
We do need to be watchful of the environmental cost of alternatives to some plastic, especially if shipping becomes heavier, using more fuel for example, but in general it seems the reduction in single-use plastic is already a solid trend and there should be no reason to keep producing and using most of it.
Climate Disasters Will Keep Increasing in Frequency and Impact
Although many towns, businesses, and nations are implementing measures to adapt to changing climate and the world is working on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, for the next few decades (at least) climate disasters will keep getting worse.
Preliminary data for 2022 suggest it was a record-breaking year for methane emission (investigations as to why are ongoing), that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere continue to climb, ocean heat (most of the excess global heat is absorbed by the ocean) is still steadily rising, as is ocean acidity (as a result of absorbing CO2). Sea level rise is accelerating, and this last year saw massive melt on the Greenland ice sheet and for European glaciers, and Antarctica had some of its lowest sea ice extents last year and this winter.
This is all very bad news indeed. It is extremely likely that we have crossed some important tipping points in how these systems are now functioning.
As we move into the next year and beyond, heatwaves and heavy rainfall will occur more frequently almost everywhere, while coastal storms will produce greater impacts as a result of higher sea levels and continued building in increasingly vulnerable areas. It isn’t a difficult or surprising prediction that we will keep seeing climate-fueled disasters. And they will get worse.
In 2022, the US had 18 disasters that cost more than $1 billion and almost 500 lives were lost. The annual average number of ‘billion-dollar disasters’ (all inflation adjusted to 2022) has increased from about 3 or so in the 1980s to 5 or so in the 1990s, to around 7 in the 2000s, 13 in the 2010s, and now the average since 2020 is 17.8.
And the US is still a wealthy nation where loss of life is generally lower. In Pakistan, the devastating flooding this year claimed over 1500 lives, and that came on the heels of a heatwave in India and Pakistan that claimed dozens of lives.
The increase in costly disasters is in part due to the increasing frequency and severity of some types of climate events, but it is also because we are building in places that are vulnerable. For example, building at the coast, in floodplains, or putting more homes in the wildland/urban interface where wildfire can whip through a community, causes more damage and higher costs in each event.
Building codes can only do so much to prevent damage to buildings that are placed increasingly in harm’s way. We will all have to get more comfortable with ‘climate-sensitive zoning’, but there will also be more conversations cropping up about long-term plans to abandon certain risky areas. Native American tribes are already having to contend with moving villages away from crumbling and sinking coasts, and tentative explorations of ‘managed retreat’ from the coast have already begun in the US, New Zealand, The Netherlands and other places.
But for the most part, these are approaches that will reduce risk only in the long-term. In the short-term, lives and homes and businesses lost will continue to increase.
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A few concluding thoughts and a final prediction
While this newsletter is all about exploring the ways in which humans and their environment can flourish together, and I am a firm believer that unnecessary doom and gloom doesn’t serve us in any way at all, it also isn’t appropriate to ignore the very real impacts that we now face.
In fact, facing our challenges head on is the only way we will do better.
So, it is never my intention to ruin your day: I want to share what’s happening out there in the world, which means sharing the bad news, but also the action, the best efforts, and the very real progress we’re making.
Hopefully, this brief look ahead to the next year and beyond will renew your sense of urgency but also give you hope and belief that we are making our way through our errors and towards a wiser, more sustainable, and Earth-friendly future. For sure, we have a long way to go, and in some senses - especially in climate and in biodiversity - it will get worse before it gets better. But the more we do now, the quicker the turnaround can come.
There is a lot we can do individually, but the most important thing we can do is to elect leaders who also see a future that we can all improve - through cooperation, justice, and support of regenerative processes and clean energy.
I am cautiously relieved that the US seems to have pulled itself back from the brink of an autocratic and illiberal near future, but we cannot let our attention wander over the next couple of years.
And this is the final prediction: politically, we will start to come back to our senses. Not just in the US, but globally.
The illiberal right has had its moment. Brazil and Australia recently rejected hard right leadership, and so did we in the US. It’s time to consolidate this recovery and build on it for common good and our human and planetary wellness.
I predict that we will.